prompt - haymitch's liver finally fails him. (angst fest 2k15)

I wrote this a year ago after my grandfather's funerals. Since today is the anniversary of his passing, I thought it would be a good day to actually proofread and publish this one. You know, to be on the side of cheerful XD Anyway, you asked for it several times so… Here it is. Read at your own discretion.

Also, yeah, it's my hc that hayffie is like those birds who can't live without each other. They can't survive alone.

Lovebirds

The house felt oddly unfamiliar.

Effie had been living in Twelve for twenty-seven years now and the house had been her home for just as long. And yet it felt unfamiliar, foreign in ways it had never been. There was a particular kind of silence nowadays. It reminded her of before.

Before she had move to Twelve.

Before the house had been hers to call home.

Before the war.

She loved their home more than she had ever been attached to any place. They had made very good sets of memories in it. Every room had a story to tell. A lot of pieces of furniture made her want to blush when she thought about what they used to do on them – it made her a bit wistful too. All the trinkets and knick-knacks made her smile or roll her eyes because he had fought her tooth and nails on most of her decoration choices. It was more than just a few walls and a roof, it was theirs.

And now…

Now the air had the same stale quality it used to have when she had visited on every Reaping Day.

It felt like a tomb.

Not yet but soon, she mused as she nodded to whatever Peeta was saying. She wasn't listening. She had stopped listening a couple of weeks earlier. She wasn't doing it on purpose, she was trying, but her mind wandered and she didn't have the energy in her to try to keep up. Peeta didn't really look his forty-three years but Effie felt the weight of her sixty-two ones heavily.

"Are you sure?" Peeta concluded.

It caught her attention because it required her to actually engage verbally instead of simply nodding. She didn't have time to admit she hadn't heard a single word. Katniss sighed, placing down her cup of coffee with unhidden irritation. She still had her temper after all those years and it made Effie glad, their girl of fire was still burning.

Effie realized she was still holding her own cup between her hands and it was now cold. She stood to pour it in the sink, washed it and put it to dry, her eyes wandering to the clock on the opposite wall, silently calculating how long had passed since she had left the room, how long had the doctor been in and what it might mean.

"We've talked about this over and over again. We've been talking about this for months." Katniss snapped. "Stop bringing it up. You know what Haymitch wants."

What Haymitch wants… It was all about what Haymitch wanted, wasn't it? When Effie thought back to the many times he had called her a selfish cow…

She ducked her head to hide her smile. They wouldn't understand her smiling. Nobody was smiling much anymore.

"I know what we talked about. But now it's happening." Peeta insisted – for what probably was the thousandth time. "If we took him to the hospital…"

"They would hook him to morphling and pump him with meds." Effie cut in calmly before he could finish that thought. "They would keep him alive for a few more days, a week perhaps. And he would die on a hospital bed, in a hospital room." She reached out and squeezed the boy's shoulder. "I know you are sad, darling, and I know this is hard… But it is what he wants and we will give it to him. He is going to die in our bed, in our house, and I am going to be with him when it happens."

Peeta turned his head away, pain and guilt battling on his face, but he covered her hand with his own.

"What do we do about the kids?" Katniss asked.

Her voice was strong and leveled. Effie suspected the girl would collapse when everything would be over but for now she had been doing a very good job at remaining collected. She had been very helpful lately. More than Peeta who couldn't quite accept that they were going to lose him, that there would be no cheating, no miracles and no escaping it. Katniss, on the other hand, had a lot of experience in keeping her family standing. Effie had tried to be that for them all but Haymitch needed her and she needed to be present for him so much that she had been neglecting them a little.

"We've been preparing them to the idea." Peeta reminded her, after clearing his throat.

Effie's blue eyes automatically darted to the framed picture of the six of them on the kitchen wall. It was from two years earlier, her birthday, and they all looked so happy… She knew they had been heading to where they were now for a few years but having the children and their grandchildren around had helped them ignore the problem. They had happily pretended a few pills would cure the increasing medical problems, his liver's failure had been something they knew was waiting down the line but not something they had actually been ready to face.

It had been a couple of months of agony now.

A slow inevitable decline.

She often thought – and even though he hadn't said it, she knew he agreed – that something quicker might have been more merciful. He was living this as a penance of sort, a last opportunity to atone for the demons he still carried.

She wasn't sure Rye would remember of the happy times they had shared as a family. Seven wasn't very old and Haymitch hadn't been as present for him as he had been for Willow. Willow was twelve and Effie knew she would remember forever, she worshipped her grandfather.

"Not what I mean." Katniss grumbled. "Do we take them to see him? Say goodbye? Do we ask them to wait with us until it's over or…"

"They should go." Peeta shrugged. "It's only right."

"There is no right or wrong." Effie shook her head. There was propriety, of course, and she knew what her own mother would have said but it didn't matter anymore. "We should explain the situation to them, warn them about the state he is in… They know he is ill…"

"They don't know he's dying." Katniss countered and then abruptly looked away as if she couldn't quite believe what she had just said. She swallowed hard. "How do I tell my kids that Haymitch is…"

"I will do it." Effie offered without really thinking about it.

"You don't have to." Peeta frowned. "I can…"

"I will do it." she insisted. "It will be better coming from me anyway."

A door closed softly upstairs and the stairs soon creaked. They all braced themselves like they always did every afternoon when the doctor visited.

Effie hated that man.

It had nothing to do with him as a person – because he was a very nice polite man – or as a doctor – because he was very competent – but she hated him all the same. She couldn't help but resent that he had been the one making the diagnosis and telling them there would be no cure in the first place.

He was just as sympathetic as usual, answering Peeta's questions and facing Katniss' sullen looks without flinching. Effie spaced out again only returning to reality when the girl grabbed her hand. This was such a rare thing, she forced herself to focus.

A few day.

That was what the doctor said.

How strange to think of a life numbered in days, in hours.

She felt guilty about the times – more than she would care to admit – when she had wished it would be quicker.

Suddenly everything was going too fast.

Time had this strange elastic quality.

Suddenly she was talking to the children, making sure they understood, and holding them while they cried. Rye was spooked by the whole thing and refused to go see Haymitch. He asked if his grandpa would be angry with him and she didn't have to lie when she told him that, of course, he wouldn't be. Willow went but she didn't stay long and she didn't come back. The child was devastated.

Effie hardly ever left their room the following days.

He hadn't been conscious a lot before but now he barely woke up and he was never lucid enough to hold a conversation. She couldn't even say what they had really talked about for the last time. She thought it had been about something trivial like the weather. There had been no heartfelt goodbyes, no promises, no meaningful exchange.

She had thought they would have more time for that.

It just came to prove you never knew the last time was the last.

One evening, the doctor said he wouldn't last the night. Of course, he was still alive two days later.

Effie was torn between laughter and sobs at his sheer stubbornness. Only Haymitch Abernathy would refuse to die when the doctor declared him lost. She was lying on the bed with him, tucked against his side like she had done every night for almost three decades. Peeta was on a chair, holding his hand and Katniss was sitting at the foot of the bed, her hand on his shin.

Effie could feel each of his raspy breath on her forehead.

She was dreading the moment it would stop.

She almost didn't notice. Because suddenly it was like her heart was ripping in two. It was gone as soon as it happened and her heart started racing, pounding hard in her chest. She knew he was gone. She buried her face in his shoulder, clenching her jaw to remain silent as the tears slipped from her eyes.

The children cried.

They called the doctor.

She heard nothing.

She was empty.

It felt like being in a dream.

Eventually she stood up, comforted Katniss as much as she would allow her, hugged Peeta until he stopped crying, went over to their house with them to break the news to the children… She planned the funerals, chose the clothes… She insisted on a tie but ripped it off long before they put him in the coffin. He would have hated it and while annoying him one last time was tempting, it didn't feel right.

As long as she was busy she was fine and so she never stopped, never sat down, never gave herself time to think, absolutely ignored the pain in her back and the numerous clenching of her heart…

It was only when she came home after the funerals – and after avoiding doing it for as long as possible – that she truly felt the massive weight of his absence.

She lied down on their bed and it felt so huge and vast…

She fell asleep with her face against his pillow, breathing his smell in.

She never woke up.

The doctor said she had a heart attack, that she went away in her sleep and probably didn't feel a thing.

Peeta and Katniss both agreed she had died of grief.

Some souls weren't meant to be parted.